news 2013

Ninety-nine percent of all of Earth's land ice is locked up in the massive Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. However, over the period 2003 to 2009, the melting of the world's other land ice stored in glaciers contributed just as much to sea level rise as the two ice sheets combined. This is the result of a new study led by Alex Gardner from Clark University (USA), which has been published in the current issue of the journal Science.

The first digital opal map for the Australian continent, showing where gem-quality opal is most likely to be found, has been created by a team of researchers at the University of Sydney. The research was recently published in the Journal of Australian Earth Sciences and in Computers & Geosciences .

We all know that the Earth rotates beneath our feet, but new research from ANU has revealed that the centre of the Earth is out of sync with the rest of the planet, frequently speeding up and slowing down. Associate Professor Hrvoje Tkalcic from the ANU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences and his team used earthquake doublets to measure the rotation speed of Earth's inner core over the last 50 years.

For the second time in less than a month, an expert from the Yale Peabody Museum has been called in to confirm that object found near a Connecticut home is a meteorite. On May 8, only 19 days after a meteorite landed on a house in Wolcott, Connecticut, it was reported that an object hit a house only 0.78 miles away in the town of Waterbury.

Cirrus clouds form around mineral dust and metallic particles, study finds. At any given time, cirrus clouds - the thin wisps of vapor that trail across the sky - cover nearly one-third of the globe. These clouds coalesce in the upper layers of the troposphere, often more than 10 miles above the Earth's surface.

A new research project led by the University of Glasgow will trace how Scotland's traditional regional dialects are changing and help map our linguistic future. The project is investigating the growth of 'bidialectalism', looking at what it will mean to the long term future of linguistics in Scotland.

A roughly 3.5-mile high Martian mound that scientists suspect preserves evidence of a massive lake might actually have formed as a result of the Red Planet's famously dusty atmosphere, an analysis of the mound's features suggests. If correct, the research could dilute expectations that the mound holds evidence of a large body of water, which would have important implications for understanding Mars' past habitability.

The world’s salt marshes could hold the key to predicting future sea levels after scientists used them to pinpoint when recent rises began. Scientists analysed sediments and fossils buried in salt marshes which show the recent rise in global sea levels – posing a threat to millions of coastal homes worldwide – began around a century ago.

Scientists at the University of Liverpool and the Royal Veterinary College developed computer models of the skeletons of dinosaurs to show how body shape changed during dinosaur evolution and affected the way birds stand today. The study reveals for the first time that, contrary to popular opinion, it was the enlargement of the forelimbs over time, rather than the shortening and lightening of the tail, that led to two-legged dinosaurs gradually adopting an unusually crouched posture, with the thigh held nearly horizontally - a trait inherited by their descendants: birds.

New research from Oxford University casts doubt on the theory that the Mount Toba super-eruption, which took place at the Indonesian island of Sumatra 75,000 years ago, could have plunged the Earth into a volcanic winter leading to the near extinction of early humans. A fresh analysis of volcanic ash recovered from lake sediment cores in Lake Malawi in East Africa shows that the eruption spewed ash much further than studies have previously found.

An Imperial researcher discusses what is happening below the Earth's crust in Africa. A powerful earthquake in China's rural south-west, which measured 6.6 in magnitude, highlighted the importance of research to understand what is happening inside the Earth's rocky and often violent interior.

New study supports theory that Earth's earliest crust was folded back into its mantle and returned to the surface in volcanoes An international team of researchers, including Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, geochemist James Day, has found new evidence that material contained in oceanic lava flows originated in Earth's ancient Archean crust.

UAlberta research yields first evidence that "microraptors" could catch prey in the water as well as on land. University of Alberta-led research reveals that Microraptor , a small flying dinosaur, was a complete hunter—able to swoop down and pick up fish as well as its previously known prey of birds and tree-dwelling mammals.

Many more Whites live in mixed neighbourhoods in 2011 than 2001, according to first analyses of recently-released census data, although there was no movement towards creation of substantial Indian, Pakistani, or Bangladeshi exclusive neighbourhoods, study finds. The increased multi-ethnic composition of the population of England and Wales between 2001-2011 has been paralleled by the increased multi-ethnic character of many residential neighbourhoods, especially in London, according to new research from the University of Bristol.

Jim Erickson, University of Michigan, (734) 647-1842, ericksn [a] umich (p) edu or Christine Buckley, University of Connecticut, (860) 486-0680, christine.buckley [a] uconn (p) edu ANN ARBOR-Using a new laboratory technique to analyze fossil snail shells, scientists have gained insights into an abrupt climate shift that transformed the planet nearly 34 million years ago.

Rebecca Scott Media Officer University of Melbourne +613 83440181 Alvin Stone Media and Manager Centre of Excellence Climate System Science, UNSW +612 9385 8953 The first continental-scale reconstruction of temperatures over the past 2000 years has found 20th Century warming was a global event that has produced the hottest global average temperature in 1400 years.

New study of sea floor core samples sheds light on how mammals and the Antarctic environment evolved in icy conditions. The emergence of mammals such as whales and penguins and the ecosystem that we are familiar with today in the seas off Antarctica can be traced back to when it was transformed into an icy world approximately 33.5 million years ago, according to research published today .

Geology professor Dan Schulze calls this singular gem from the remote Guaniamo region of Venezuela the "Picasso" diamond. The blue luminescent, high-resolution image of a diamond formed over a billion years ago reminds him of some paintings from Picasso's Blue Period. Like a cubist masterpiece, its striking irregular and anomalous features carry timeless secrets and yield new perspectives on life and the Earth's early history.

n the last few decades, glaciers at the edge of the icy continent of Antarctica have been thinning, and research has shown the rate of thinning has accelerated and contributed significantly to sea level rise. New ice core research suggests that, while the changes are dramatic, they cannot be attributed with confidence to human-caused global warming, said Eric Steig, a University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences.

Researchers use volcanic islands to measure how rainfall sets the pace of landscape formation. If you've ever stood on a hill during a rainstorm, you've probably witnessed landscape evolution, at least on a small scale: rivulets of water streaming down a slope, cutting deeper trenches in the earth when the rain turns heavier.